Related papers: An introduction to compact source detection in cos…
An enormous amount of observations on Cosmic Microwave Background radiation has been collected in the last decade, and much more data are expected in the near future from planned or operating satellite missions. These datasets are a…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is an abundant source of cosmological information. However, this information is encoded in non-trivial ways in a signal that is difficult to observe. The resulting challenges in extracting this…
Microwave background polarization, though presently undetected, is a fundamental prediction of any viable cosmological model. These lectures review the theoretical description of polarization, its physical interpretation, and potentially…
I review the discovery of the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation. The underlying theory and the implications for cosmology are reviewed, and I describe the prospects for future progress.
The recent high-quality measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies have presented cosmologists with the possibility of studying the large scale properties of our universe with unprecedented precision. Here I review the…
Several cosmological measurements have attained significant levels of maturity and accuracy over the last decade. Continuing this trend, future observations promise measurements of the statistics of the cosmic mass distribution at an…
Weak gravitational lensing of distant galaxies by foreground structures has proven to be a powerful tool to study the mass distribution in the universe. The advent of panoramic cameras on 4m class telescope has led to a first generation of…
The existence of a cosmic neutrino background -- the analogue of the cosmic microwave background -- is a fundamental prediction of standard big bang cosmology. Up to now, the observational evidence for its existence is rather indirect and…
In this paper we introduce a new linear filtering technique, the so-called matrix filters, that maximizes the signal-to-interference ratio of compact sources of unknown intensity embedded in a set of images by taking into account the…
The current understanding of dark matter comes largely from measurements of the total matter content in the universe, from the distribution of gravitating matter on very large scales, and from rotation curves and velocity dispersions on…
Observations of the cosmic microwave background represent a remarkable source of information for modern cosmology. Besides providing impressive support for the Big Bang model itself, they quantify the overall framework, or background, for…
With polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) now detected, and confirmed by several independent experiments, the next goal is to characterise accurately its statistical properties. In these lecture notes we review the physical…
In this article we focus on the astrophysical results and the related cosmological implications derived from recent microwave surveys, with emphasis to those coming from the Planck mission. We critically discuss the impact of systematics…
This article considers the detection of point sources in two dimensional astronomical images. The detection scheme we propose is based on peak statistics. We discuss the example of the detection of far galaxies in Cosmic Microwave…
The upcoming satellite missions MAP and Planck will measure the spectrum of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background with unprecedented accuracy. We discuss the prospect of using these observations to distinguish among proposed…
Polarization of the cosmic microwave background, though not yet detected, provides a source of information about cosmological parameters complementary to temperature fluctuations. This paper provides a complete theoretical treatment of…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) represents a unique source for the study of gravitational lensing. It is extended across the entire sky, partially polarized, located at the extreme distance of z=1100, and is thought to have the…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) comprises the oldest photons in the universe and is arguably our most direct cosmological observable. All precise and accurate measurements of its attributes serve to distinguish between cosmological…
A short introduction to structure formation is given, followed by a discussion of the possible characteristics of the initial perturbations assuming a generic inflationary origin. Observational data related to large-scale structure and the…
In forthcoming years, connections between cosmology and particle physics will be made increasingly important with the advent of a new generation of cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. Here, we review a number of these links. Our…